Profligate Water Use in the U.S. Is Fueling the Flight of Mexicans Across the Border

By Jo-Shing Yang, AlterNet. Posted November 11, 2008.

On October 21, 2008, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne inaugurated the ground breaking of the new Imperial Valley water reservoir near the U.S.-Mexico border. The 500-acre $172.2-million reservoir, to be completed in August 2010, will store surplus Colorado River water for use by coastal Southern California, southern Nevada, and central Arizona; previously this water had been flowing to Mexico and used by its cities and thousands of Mexican farmers.

This reservoir, along with the $250 million project to line a 23-mile stretch of the All-American Canal, also in the Imperial Valley, with concrete to prevent water seepage to an underground aquifer, Mexicali Valley aquifer, which is used currently by Mexican cities and farmers, means that there will be substantially less water from the Colorado River and dire consequences for Mexico.

An estimated 67,000 acre-feet of water seeps from the canal annually. In 2006, the Mexican government and two California environmental groups filed a lawsuit to stop the canal-lining project-ultimately unsuccessful. This captured seepage water will be sent to San Diego for municipal use. Now, Mexico has even less water to use, although theoretically it will still get its share of water of 1.5 million acre-feet under the 1944 treaty. The new Imperial Valley reservoir and the All-American Canal lining are two nails in the coffin of Mexico's water future. The triumphant U.S. water and irrigation districts, the winners of the two latest battles in the U.S.-Mexico water wars, are gloating over their victory in capturing the last drops of water in the Colorado River before they reach Mexico. Now, in the drought-stricken southwest, they can continue to irrigate vast corporate farms planted with thirsty crops, hose millions of suburban lawns, sprinkle golf courses, and fill tens of thousands of private swimming pools.

The losers are, naturally, poor Mexican peasants and subsistence farmers. Drought-induced social strains are the hardest for the most vulnerable people in Mexico and will further fuel illegal migration to the United States.

The problem with U.S. water negotiators is that they do not see water as a basic human right: they see water as a commodity in this war over natural resources; this view is reinforced by a decade-long catastrophic drought in the Colorado River Basin and the entire region of southwestern United States and northern Mexico. There are other nails, of course, in the coffin of Mexico's water future: a mega-drought induced by global climate disruptions; chronic lack of funding for water infrastructure and utilities throughout the country; rapid development and population growth; increasing pollution; water privatization and inequality in water allocation (i.e., the wealthy-such as agribusiness, cattle ranchers, and mining corporations-get about 70 percent of water for virtually nothing, while the poor must buy costly water from trucks and often die of waterborne diseases); and in general, governmental corruption, incompetence, infighting, and mismanagement of water.

As more than 85 percent of Mexico is arid or semi-arid, Mexico's government considers deforestation and the lack of clean water two national security issues, and before he left office its former president Vicente Fox repeatedly said that water is a national security issue. In the past year, Mexico's poor have had to contend with skyrocketing food prices, general inflation (which also raised the price of water they must buy from water-delivery trucks driving long distances), a calamitous drought, rising unemployment, and increasing hunger and malnourishment.

The poor have staged street protests-the so-called tortilla riots-since January 2007 when tens of thousands of Mexicans marched to protest against a 50 percent price hike of corn tortillas. Now the subsistence farmers have even less water to irrigate their crops, which means decreased harvests and more expensive food staples further out of reach of the urban poor; but the livelihood of those living on subsistence farming will be affected as well by drought and water scarcity and higher food prices for the food they cannot grow and must buy themselves. Thus, this water scarcity and water insecurity is triggering food insecurity in Mexico, which has implications for its national security.

Global Climate Disruptions and Extreme Drought in Mexico and Southwestern United States

Like the southwestern United States, which has been suffering from a decade-long drought which began in 1998, northern Mexico also has been afflicted by a punishing drought since 1992. This year, the extreme drought in Mexico continues, unrelenting. Climate scientists have predicted that the entire region from southwestern United States to north-central Mexico will be hit especially hard by global climate change and its associated extreme weather disruptions and extreme droughts. For example, researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography forecasted that Lake Mead will be empty by 2021 at the current rate of use. According to a United Nations-commissioned report published in August 2008, there will be more increased dry periods and significant drought hazards in most of Mexico and Central America due to global climate disruptions.

Mexico's largest freshwater lake, Lake Chapala, in the state of Jalisco, has been steadily shrinking since the 1970s. Scientists said that the lake has lost approximately 80 percent of its water due to rapid development in central Mexico. Researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have linked the mega-drought to the impacts of NAFTA and water privatization in Mexico in a February 2008 study:

See more stories tagged with: water, us, mexico, water privatization, nafta, water scarcity, water shortage, southwest

Jo-Shing Yang is the author of Ecological Planning, Design, & Engineering, Solving Global Water Crises: New Paradigms in Wastewater and Water Treatment, Small and On-Site Systems for Water Self-Sufficiency and Sustainability and can be reached at jsyang@alum.mit.edu.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Water! Sign up now »